Thursday, July 07, 2011

TSI and Global Warming

Timothy Birdnow

I seem to have gotten into an argument with a global warming alarmist at Second Hand Smoke (Please - try not to show your utter shock!) I was looking for a fairly recent paper showing TSI (total solar irradiance for those who do not know) changes are higher than guys like Torbjorn Larsson claim, but could not find it. Ron, any chance you've got it?

At any rate, here is my original comment, Mr. Larsson's reply, and my reply to him:

Timothy Birdnow

The AGW argument is becoming Medieval; how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

The sun is still far and away the best explanation.http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/22/does-solar-activity-have-to-keep-going-up-to-cause-warming-mike-lockwood-responds-3/

Why do climate scientists refuse to consider this? Money will go to astronomy if an answer is to be found there, instead of to climatology which deals with atmospheric phonomena.

Torbjörn Larsson, OMJuly 6th, 2011 | 5:39 pm @ Timothy Birdnow:

“The sun is still far and away the best explanation. … Why do climate scientists refuse to consider this?”

Of course they are, AGW is *based* on the sun heating the Earth. Furthermore, variation in sun irradation is included in the models. IIRC AGW is ~ 5 % of the driving factors, but explain the average increase in GW. The sun variation comes out as something like 0.1 % of the drive.

These facts aren’t very hard to get hold of, climate scientists positively flood their papers with this as it is observed and AGW is the one theory predicting data. The reasonable explanation is not that denialists can’t read, but that denialists are willfully ignoring the science.

Oh, really, Mr. Larsson? I suppose they have taken into account those pesky cosmic rays? (Shaviv, 2005)Solar cycle 22 gave us this. http://www.atnf.csiro.au/pasa/18_1/duldig/paper/node5.html

It should be pointed out that TSI varied only 0.1 to 0.3% during the Maunder Minimum, yet we had a mini-ice age. You see only direct forcings at work. What of ultraviolet levels? There is evidence that UV changes the shape of the Earth's atmosphere.

Every one of those precious models are based on the same GCM', the ones employed by the IPCC. Interesting to note that those same models cannot predict current conditions when past conditions are plugged into them. But you say AGW is the one theory predicting data.

And bad data at that. Just look at surfacestations.org to see how corrupt the data are, or look to the tomfoolery at the Climate Research Unit, which supplies data to scientists.

What of magnetic effects? Do any of these models take magnetic reconnect events into account?

Solar activity correlates quite closely with the temperature variations we see. These facts aren't very hard to get hold of. See here http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/friis-christensen-lassen-19911.png or here http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/lagged-solar-cycle-length-and-temp-stephen-strum-frontier-weather-inc.png

In point of fact during the 20th century the sun went through something called the Grand Maximum which saw the most active sun in 11,000 years.

And if we factor in land-use changes, we come up with an ever-dwindling percentage of warming caused by CO2. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin, Mr. Larsson? Your theory only works in models, where fudge factors are employed.

The reasonable explanation is not that alarmists can't read but that alarmists are willfully ignoring the science - and, given what we know about Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, Michael Mann, etc. are lying.

End

A few years ago I wrote about TSI and global warming at Pajamas Media.http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/cold-hard-facts-and-the-big-boned-climate-theory/

I had forgotten about this piece, but reconstructed it while writing my reply.

At any rate, climate models fail to predict most of the observed data, contrary to Mr. Larsson's claims. There is no tropical tropospheric hot spot, no increase in sea level rise (they actually dropped last year), no increase in tropical hurricanes, no increase in planetary precipitation. Many tropical islands are actually growing, not shrinking. No statistically significant warming since 1995. Oceans aren't warming. All we see are data sets that have clearly been massaged.